Bulgaria is selling EU passports for just Eur180,000
A report published by The Telegraph last night gives the details on how Bulgaria is selling EU passports for just 180,000 euros with no need to be resident there, though having an address in Bulgaria “helps fast-track the application”.
Muscat’s and Zammit Lewis’s scheme has therefore been undercut by 470,000 euros.
Bulgaria began selling passports as soon as restrictions on freedom of movement within the European Union, for Bulgarians and Romanians, were lifted on 1 January this year.
The flaw in the Maltese government’s reasoning was the failure to understand that ‘European Commission approval’ (it is not approval at all – the European Commission cannot approve the sale of EU passports – but an ‘our hands are tied and we don’t want trouble’ approach) is a two-edged sword.
If it cannot act to stop Malta doing this, the European Commission cannot act to stop any other member state. It was obvious at the outset that some financially desperate member state with serious corruption problems would follow suit, and at a cheaper price.
Muscat’s and Zammit Lewis’s scheme (to say nothing of Henley & Partners’) was based on the assumption of 1. demand outstripping supply, and 2. their full control of supply as issuers of Maltese passports. But the reality is that an EU passport is an EU passport is an EU passport. It is not only Malta who can sell them. Supply is therefore not in the full control of the Maltese government and it will outstrip demand as soon as even just one other EU member state begins selling for cash as well. This will cause the price, already very low at 650,000 euros, to fall further. And this has happened already: the price has not so much fallen as crashed, to 180,000 euros.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/investigations/10699637/EU-citizenship-for-sale-to-non-Europeans-in-Bulgaria-for-as-little-as-150000.html?fb
What’s sauce for the goose…..
If I were a rich man, I would buy a Bulgarian passport and then settle in Malta taking advantage of all the benefits that Malta has to offer.
If I were a rich man, I’d buy a Bulgarian passport and scuttle off to London, where all the rich people live.
Why don’t we set up an agency selling Bulgarian passports right outside Henley and Partners office in Malta?
Can you imagine the screeching police cars coming after us, say twenty minutes into it?
Why do you live here? Why don’t you yourself scuttle off to London.
That is a BRILLIANT idea!
Sort of like the fast food kiosk just outside the de Mondion restaurant.
Because I’m trying to save my country, dear Rene.
So please go and get your passport from Bulgaria and leave us alone. Thank you
Joseph Muscat has to give the boot to Henley & Partners to be competitive.
He’s stuck with them. Who bankrolled his campaign?
This was to be expected.
Kemm nifilhu naqghu ghan-nejk bhala pajjiz bi gvern mnejjek?
They even take you to court for calling them clowns.
Clowns? That’s an honour .
Ask the late Father Peter.
This country is run by frauds not by clowns.
Obnoxious, illiterate, incompetent frauds.
People who are in an intimate relationship with The Econonmist.
Not as bad as their mentor, that decomposing, cuckolding monster of a so-called human being who missed out on selling his belts, but almost.
We will be paying Chinese, Azeris and Russians to take Maltese passports to mitigate our deficiency of People-Of-Calibre.
The EU needs to move its backside because this is becoming ridiculous and the union will end up imploding. Countries where in recent times democracy has been flimsy such Malta, some of the ex-eastern block and the southern Balkans need scrutiny and regulation.
Look at it from another perspective…
Bulgaria may be selling passports because opposition parties didn’t put spokes in wheels.
Probably this comment won’t appear in your blog… this is the democracy you believe in… I’m sure all comments in favour of the LP are blocked as all comments in this blog are pro-PN.
Have you seen the current political spectrum in Bulgaria? If you’re not corrupt you’re not elected.
I mean, do you really want to compare Malta to that place?
No need to compare – who cares about Bulgaria…..one just buys passport there then he/she can live anywhere in the EU – that includes Malta.
The whole issue of the matter is getting a passport accepted in EU….once one gets it does he/she really want to live here ? Why ?
As said elsewhere, somebody undercutting Malta was bound to happen and people wanting to buy don’t really care where it came from…they only look at price.
Oh, so you are in earnest when you said that bit about Bulgaria having no opposition putting spokes in the wheels of the government.
Until I reached your last sentence, I thought you were being sarcastic.
People who comment on this blog, except for the odd Eddy Privitera comment here and there, are rational people, Robert, with their head placed well on their shoulders.
That’s why they appear to be pro-PN.
Correction Robert …. please note that the comments that you are referring to are simply pro-MALTA TAGHNA. Nispera, fuq kollox li int Malti.
People like Robert seem to start out in life with a huge chip on their shoulders and this, unfortunately but inescapably, colours everything else they get involved in.
Look at the amount of unnecessary conditioned emotion he reveals that speaks volumes.
It was just a matter of time. So much for the “rod mep”. Kemm hu bravu joseph taghna, he wrecked our reputation on this whoring gambit only to find there is a cheaper slut around. I wonder if Henleys are advising Bulgaria. It would be just their style.
That would be hilarious.
All Muscat did was start a race to the bottom. The complete lack of vision meant that they never saw this coming. Of course once one country had chosen not to obey an unwritten rule, and the EU by its very nature is not able to quickly re-write treaties — the Lisbon Treaty took long enough to be ratified — the other Member States then realised that the mutual respect had been violated which then precipitated into a free-for-all.
Now countries will undercut each other until the necessary treaty changes are made now that they know that Malta has started a precedent. The EU did not approve the scam; it simply conceded that it did not have the power to interfere. It was an oversight in the drafting of the treaties – a scenario even the more wary never saw coming.
Prosit Muscat. No vision, no road map and no intelligence. So what’s it going to be then? 15 million? ‘Elf miljun’? A trillion perhaps? Also, Bulgarian citizenship is much more attractive than Maltese citizenship. I am sure it offers many more opportunities than a forlorn island run by a bunch of incompetents could. Ah, to the Black Sea we go.
http://rt.com/news/uk-auction-buy-visa-609/
Robert, Bulgaria is selling passports not because the opposition has not put spokes in the wheels but because it is a corrupt and poor country and that is how the PL have portrayed us in the eyes of the world.
Let’s face it, one does not have to be a rocket scientist to thing of a scheme like this. Was not done before because we had a government that respected our sovereignty.
The tragedy!
Up until a few months ago Malta was compared to Germany. Now we share news with the bottom set.
And Muscat promised we would be the best in Europe!
And then we wonder why the original member states were so sceptical about Malta and the eastern bloc countries joining the EU?
In my view all this hype is going to do is to make the UK (and Canadian if still on) visa programs more appealing. Four years is a long time and I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to shell out 650K for a passport with the possibility of ending up stranded either on a 4×4 island or a tin pot economy.
Canada has declared that it is suspending the visa programme.
This is a doddle. We should buy a Bulgarian passport at 180,000 euros and resell it for 650,000 euros. Vera bargin. U wertit ukoll.
I imagine EU passports can also be sold through the Bulgarian embassy in Malta.
Joseph Muscat jgħajjar lil Simon Busuttil li tilef kull kredenzjali u kredibilta’.
Mela x’għamlet issa Malta wara dik il-publiċita’ negattiva li qalgħet Malta wara l-introduzzjoni tal-iskema tac-Ċittadinanza kif fassalha Joseph?
U biex żgur inkomplu naqgħu għaċ-ċajt mad-dinja, il-prezz tal-iskema Maltija gie ‘undercut’ b’dal-mod goff minn pajjiż bi kredenzjali daqshekk baxxi bħal Bulgarija.
Tajjeb mela, issa Muscat weighed l-ilma jisfen bhal childcare centres b’ xejn bil promessa li idahhal il-flus bil-IIP.
Issa jekk dawn ic-Cinizi, Russi u x’ naf jien jixtruhom mil-Bulgarija, il-weghdiet elettorali ta’ Muscat jew jisfaxxaw fix-xejn jew finanzi tal-pajjiz dritt fil-hajt biex kif jghid hu’iwettaq li weighed’.
Mulej henn ghalina.
Viviane Reding should be fired. This is turning into a farce!
Ummm no she shouldn’t. It is actually not her fault. It is Muscat’s fault for crossing an invisible line, a line that was only invisible to him. Now that it has been crossed it is a free-for-all.
Those who drafted the treaties are the ones to blame for not seeing that this would be possible. They did not make allowance for this in the treaties because it is one area that the Member States generally try to stay away from – the granting or otherwise of citizenship.
It should have been obvious to anyone that once we got away with it others would follow and outdo us. What is so special about Malta after all in this respect?
The only ‘advantage’ we had, or thought we had, was a total lack of self respect, but we don;t have a monopoly on that either.
Muscat was celebrated by his supporters as a pioneer of the innovative means of raising money by selling passports. I guess what they didn’t bank on was that competition would come so early as to jeopardise whatever profit they hoped to gain in the meantime.
I wonder what the reaction of the Maltese beggars hoping to get their slice will be.